War Movie

Since about two hours after Fahrenheit 9/11 was
released, there’s been a deluge of agit-prop documentaries about what a
shitty place George W. Bush & Co. have made the world. For all
their noble intentions, these movies are usually terrible, and War,
Inc. is, basically, another one to add to the list—even
though it’s a comedy and even though it takes place in the make-believe
land of Turaquistan.

But Turaquistan is Iraq, and the occupying force—the Tamerlane
Corporation, which is waging “the first war ever to be 100 percent
outsourced to private enterprise”—is America, and John Cusack is
us: As Brand Hauser, he’s a Tamerlane operative who’s in bed with the
military industrial complex (even though deep down, he feels really bad
about it). “Look,” he says to a liberal reporter. “We’ve already kicked
the shit outta this place. What’re we supposed to do? Turn our backs on
all the entrepreneurial possibilities?”

That reporter is Natalie Hegalhuzen (Marisa Tomei), and she’s the
kind of good-hearted spirit who writes about “corporate profit and
international branding” (for The Nation, natch). Hauser takes
Natalie on a ramshackle tour of the horrors of Turaquistan, which
include tanks festooned with billboards for Popeyes and the sexed-up
“Britney Spears of Central Asia,” Yonica Babyyeah (Hilary Duff, a long
way from the Disney Channel), whose lip-synched act includes her
fellating the nozzle of a gas pump. Meanwhile, mainstream journalists
investigate the war by going on Star Tours-style battlefield simulator
rides, and there’s a chorus line of women with prosthetic legs, since
they’ve lost their real ones to landmines. “Just another breathtaking
example of how American know-how alleviates the suffering it creates!”
Hauser brags.

As a series of gags—some great, most not—War,
Inc. is pretty impressive, if only because its happily preachy
sentiments are admirable in spirit, if not execution. As an actual
film, though, it’s just sloppy, twice as long as it needs to be, and
disappointingly sentimental in its third act. With a severe edit,
War, Inc. could’ve been pretty great; as is, it feels as messy,
rushed, and unrewarding as, say, an invasion of Turaquistan.